She needed to be home every evening when a seven-year-old got off the school bus, and she needed to stay close to the thing that had nearly been taken from her, and she found, when she looked, that there was a way to do both.

She took a position as a senior flight instructor at a commercial pilot academy outside a Texas town flat and wide enough to hold a lot of sky.

She would teach.

She would fly most days, in daylight, with a student in the other seat and solid ground never more than a few minutes below, and she would be in her own kitchen by dinner.

It was not the life she had trained for as a young woman certain she was built for something sharper.